


Under His Lips

by Talik_Sanis



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Needs Help, Angst, Bisexual Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Bisexual Luka Couffaine, Character Study, Disjointed, Experimental Style, F/M, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth Identity Reveal, Identity Reveal, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ironically, M/M, No Dialogue, Polyamory, Resentment, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator, ambiguous - Freeform, implied - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27142417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talik_Sanis/pseuds/Talik_Sanis
Summary: "It was Luka's responsibility to pick up the broken shards of people. He cradled Marinette in the palm of his hand, picking out the cigarette butts and pebbles so that only the twinkling fragments remained, straining not to cut himself. He clutched Adrien to his chest, trying to superglue the cracked pieces together on the sidewalk but only making a further mangled mess, gummed up with model cement."Luka Couffaine is an unending wellspring of gentle support; a listener; a comforter; a soft place to fall. That's why he's so poisonous.Adrien and Marinette succumb.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Luka Couffaine, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 13
Kudos: 103





	Under His Lips

**Author's Note:**

> Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:

When he'd been a young teen - as if there was any other kind - Luka had been enraptured by the simple harmony that was Marinette. His aesthetic sense has guided him, as had the easy-confident eagerness of an older boy pursuing a younger girl who was still struggling to find the voice she needed to share her song with the world.

That was his lie.

Everyone had to have at least one.

Luka was drawn to pain – brokenness concealed by a beautiful superficial melody that interweaved with the tremulous genuine strain, so tempting when it was written by the real composer hidden in the darkness, in the shadow cast by Marinette's fire or Adrien's sunshine.

He had a type: beautiful and broken.

It was his responsibility to pick up the broken shards of people like pieces of one of the many stained glass windows that had been shattered in the riots that Paris had seen in recent years – precious, intricate works of art now ugly reminders of something you'd lost, crushed and powdered, but their glittering colours still vibrant as they lay on the street.

He cradled Marinette in the palm of his hand, picking out the cigarette butts and pebbles so that only the twinkling fragments remained, straining not to cut himself. He clutched Adrien to his chest, trying to superglue the cracked pieces together on the sidewalk but only making a further mangled mess, gummed up with model cement.

To cradle brokenness was one thing, to scoop up the pieces and hold them gently. Actually fixing it was something that life had never taught him.

He spent years trying to hold the pieces together, cleaning up after his mother who indulged a little too heavily, a little too frequently, clawing at the world as she tried to grasp hold of the youth that slipped through her fingers when he and then his sister had stolen it. She was always searching for the next hit, the next thrill that she could use to pretend that she hadn't lost herself, been tied down – that she wasn't _old_ and didn't have all those responsibilities that she had thrown off onto Luka's shoulders.

 _The Liberty_ was a farce. Her lie.

Anarka preached freedom precisely because she didn't have it. She might have been able to raise anchor and set sail for another adventure, but she bore her own prison walls on her shoulders wherever she went, trying to outpace them only to find the brickwork and iron bars waiting for her on arrival. That was why the houseboat was always in a shambles; she could project that ugly mess and all the chaos into the world and pretend that it was outside of her – that _what_ she was, was the world's fault.

And she was getting too old to leave Paris; so she lied and told herself that she wanted stability for her teenage children.

It was horrible when your prison was other people - another person. It was worse when you were the prison.

Adrien and Marinette understood that; body and brain chemistry.

Luka did too, for completely different reasons.

* * *

Marinette came to him for his music, stayed with him because he was easy. He didn't push. She never fumbled. Was never confronted.

Was anything easy ever worthwhile?

Marinette only ever asked to hear popular songs because they were all she knew and while Luka was happy to indulge her as he always did, he couldn't help but be grateful when he played for Adrien. He knew the obscure works, played with him and could keep pace. Their conversations and the lilting duet between them could range from the [upbeat swing of doo-wop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLdgqXYzlLQ&ab_channel=MANNYMORA) to the classic styling of Jagged Stone, to heated debates over the best scenes in Handel's _Messiah_. Adrien preferred Act II Scene II, particularly [“](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71NCzuDNUcg&t=94m38s)[But thou didst not leave his soul in hell"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71NCzuDNUcg&t=94m38s) when delivered by tenor; Luka contended that ["For unto us a child is born"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71NCzuDNUcg&t=39m55s) was far superior.

Marinette couldn't sit through the entire _Oratorio_ , and liked the overwrought and overplayed [Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttEMYvpoR-k&ab_channel=LeonardCohenVEVO) more than the majesty of the equally ubiquitous but simply divine chorus of the same title.

Luka despised that Cohen song. It was just a muddle of metaphors and allusions, commingling myths and histories, but he played anyways. He'd play anything that chased away the demons and left Marinette refreshed.

The horrible thing was that he was thinking about Adrien when he was playing for Marinette, wishing for something ... diverse, wondering what song he might have asked for. Marinette would listen to anything he played, but Adrien... Adrien gave him the chance to play differently.

* * *

Luka smiled rarely; music was his outlet, his natural voice that unfolded his emotions to anyone who cared enough to listen. Through his calloused hands, he showed his approval and his affection with a carefully selected piece from Adrien's favourites. When he really needed to say something vital, he composed a new song for them, just letting the steady waves lap up along the edges of Adrien's heart, forever surrounded and buoyed, because it was unmoored and at the mercy of the shifting currents of sound and feeling.

Marinette liked it when he wrote songs for her. She found them ... nice in the way that he appreciated the beauty of her designs. The artistry and craftsmanship were clear, but he could never understand the details, the techniques, or the complex intentions, hard as she tried to explain them, face tightening as she grew more frustrated with herself and her failure. They just didn't speak the same language.

She stopped trying to explain; he had never tried.

Only Adrien understood both their arts enough to relish and translate.

A new song for _him_ always reminded Luka of the first time they kissed.

The night had been frigid, biting winds catching handfuls of powdery snow, scattering them across the pavement and casting sparkling clouds of white dust across the choppy waters outside of Luka's window. Holding in hand a mug of hot, spiced eggnog with a shot of rum to enhance the blooming warmth and help it spread to his extremities, Luka bedded himself down for the evening, stepping over the collected junk. Even with an extra space heater and a few blankets, an aging houseboat was not meant for comfortable winter living, but he was not one to complain.

In the mood for something classical, at least when it came to rock, Luka had slipped on a _Rolling Stones_ record because even with the radiating heat of his mug soaking so pleasantly into his palms, his fingers still felt too numb to do anything but fumble with the strings of his guitar. He could turn up the volume as loud as he wanted; Anarka and Juleka were away at a Christmas party. Then, a great pounding thump, nearly heavy enough to cause the _Liberty_ to list in dock, resounded from the deck.

A hasty scramble to the doorway had him bursting outside, only to nearly collide with the boy who was waiting for him. Clutching at his bare arms, clad only in a tee-shirt and sleep pants and not even his typical white overshirt, was Adrien. As Luka stepped aside immediately, concerns regarding frostbite overtaking the surprise, Adrien tumbled into the _Liberty_ , his face creased and blood vessels seeming to burst under his soft and still-slightly-pudgy cheeks due to the cold.

His hands had been numb, and Adrien's frost-bitten, but the boy wouldn't let Luka touch them.

Adrien hadn't spoken; he needed the music, the release, as Luka himself did every day.

It had been after a long and furious private session, the music rattling every inch of the _Liberty_ because it was truly hideous, warped in a way that even Luka's trained ear couldn't truly discern. Adrien's heart song was a cacophonous mess of different instruments, atonal, antiphonal notes that were not his own rolling over his gentle and unassuming melody.

They finished only because Adrien's weeping had become too much, so Luka was forced to ease the trembling boy away from his keyboard, taking shuddering hands in his own. Adrien had looked up, face shattered and split with long trailing tears and snot, and the feathery creases on his cheeks and rapid blinks to clear away the sting made him look utterly terrified. Like he didn't even know whether Luka could be trusted. Some rum had helped. It stung, pleasant in his mouth, but Adrien had choked on it, retching like he was downing paint thinner.

He looked like he would drink paint thinner.

They talked.

Adrien let Luka take his hand again and clutched and grabbed and clawed.

Adrien was so very strong. Clung so tightly. Held on so long, cold and warm. 

Luka's thumb was caressing the red apple of his cheek. Terrified but so, so brave, the smaller boy had looked up at him in that warm and watery and painfully, unfairly shocked way of his when Luka cupped him by the chin and told him _I love you too_.

There had been boyfriends and girlfriends and one non-binary partner, and there had even been Marinette, but no one had ever taken away his heart-song the way that Adrien did in that moment – like he no longer knew what piece he was supposed to be performing or what instruments were accompanying him.

The conductor was gone and he was tone deaf.

Maybe that was why he had said it – because the dissonance of _Adrien_ had blown out his ears and blinded him like a flash-bang chucked down below deck on the _Liberty_.

No one should ever look like you'd written a symphony for him just by saying _I love you_ , and it became so very clear to Luka that, whatever happened between them from that point forward, whatever duets they settled into over the years, he was going to make sure that Adrien knew that he was cared for.

Maybe that had been a mistake.

Maybe Adrien didn't know how to love or be loved, having never been taught, just like Luka had never been taught to fix people.

All Adrien knew was the manic-depressive wrenching between two songs that sounded like a classic love-ballad if you stopped up your ears and tried to pretend because you didn't want to hear the real music.

Sometimes, it seemed like there was only _need_ until it consumed everything you had to give and _giving_ to the point of self-immolation that burnt you up like a candle wick alongside him.

Adrien had _needed_ that night, but not in the way that Luka tried to give.

* * *

There are years when he loves them; minutes when he hates them.

When they lay together in their bed with Adrien tucked up between them, Marinette petting their boyfriend's hair while Luka tries to comfort her because he knows how hard it is to be strong for someone without someone else being strong for you – that's when he hates her.

The shuddering stops and the two of them fall asleep.

Awake, staring at the ceiling while they sleep together, curling up instinctively into each other's arms, Marinette a flopping tangle of limbs splaying out everywhere while Adrien contorts, bonelessly acquiescing in his sleep to her unconscious shifts and attempts to reposition him – that's when Luka hates him.

He can't look at Adrien's face – can't see the smooth, slack cheeks and the slowly huffing nose, or the eyes that dart back and forth under his lids, rimmed with fine, manicured brows and lashes.

He can't look at Marinette clutching at him, even asleep, hands to his waist.

He can't look at them when they wake up and smile at the first thing they see.

It's worse than the times when he hates himself because he's used to that. 

He spends years hating himself; seconds loving himself.

Because it's only for a few seconds, right before he falls asleep still hating them, that he can forget that as long as they're broken, they'll need him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm rather curious as to responses to this work, as it's unlike anything else that I've produced. An experiment in style and a reflection on Luka's character in the abstract with a little bit of fandom reflection in there as well. 
> 
> And a play on his name when it comes to the book of Romans and "Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips" (3:13).


End file.
